I've never used elements but I have used photoshop CS4 and corel photopaint extensively... corel for over 20 years. Since I got lightroom about 9 months ago I rarely open the other 2 programs. I use lightroom easily 95% of the time. If you can get student pricing from your nearest university you can get lightroom for about $116.00 in canada.. no idea what prices are like in other countries.

Lightroom was originally designed to compliment photoshop CS4. When lightroom 2 was released most everyone agreed that it had become one of the top stand alone photo editing programs on the market.

for me I use lightroom almost exclusively cause 95% of my photography is nature based and as such it is the perfect fit for me for this type of photography and the image results I am looking for.

When I do want to play with an image and get really artsy with it making drastic ajustments to make pics somewhat surreal or even turn them into what looks like paintings or abstract art I pull the images into CS4 and/or photopaint and work on them in there.

If I want to do computer generated graphics on top of the pic, I went through this phase a few years ago, I work on them in corel photopaint and corel draw.

Lightroom 3 is now also in beta and it has some cool new features.. its supposed to be a lot faster and also has a Flickr sync tool which should prove cool for users of flickr and for those with flickr pro accounts it looks like you will be able edit and update pics already posted on flickr. New noise reduction and sharpening tools as well which are supposedly better than they were before as well as a tool which lets you add noise to give the image that grainy look.... and they say that is only the start....

My personal feeling on this is that they have created a photo-editing program without all the artsy functions and drastic manipulation tools... Lightroom has found a niche for those looking at top end photo-editing while still staying within the realms of having the image remain real. It does however also allow for spot removal, softening functions and many other things to make the image more appealing while still correcting imperfections. Again.. that is just my personal opinion though.

At the risk of hijacking this thread, Citruspers and Wolfsong's comments in another thread made me have another look at Lightroom. As a long time user of Elements 7 I'm familiar with that and can get around it quickly.

I went to grab Lightroom 2 and ended up installing the 3 beta. In a quick play, LR3 does seem to have the basic editing functions I use. Mostly lighting related tweaks, crop and cloning. Most interestingly, it seems to allow RAW like adjustments on jpegs too! The critical part I guess is getting used to the interface. It also feels slower responding than PSE7.

Having said that, recently I've been doing more "processing" of some wildlife photos, to remove man-made objects in shot and give a more natural looking if less authentic output. I've got into the habit of using layers now... which I don't see in LR3. There's no mask tool in PSE7 which is in LR, which I think can do something similar, but I'm not familiar with it at all...

CS2 can do everything LR2 can do Razvan and more. LR2 may have some more modern versions of a few of the tools and may have the odd tweek that CS2 doesnt but those would be minor imo.

For me the big difference is in price and what you get for the money. I got CS4 before LR but if I would have known about LR then I would never have gotten CS4 just cause of my photography style.. nature based.

At over $1000.00 up here for CS4 I tend to think most ppl would be a lot better off with LR2 unless again.. you are into major editing going far beyond just tweeking an image to bring out its best qualities and minor imperfections.

Popo.. I love the RAW like adjustments in LR like exposure.. it does a far superior job than brightness adjustments imo. Also under the brush tool there is a brightness adjustment which allows you to do localized brightness adjustments on deeply shaded areas or areas of extreme brightness without affecting the entire image.

Play with it a bit.. I think you will like it for your nature shots.

As far as eliminating manmade objects LR3 does allow you to do it but not as efficiently as CS4 or Photopaint. If it's a small object the process is really easy. Try using the clone/heal functions under spot removal... works great on smaller manmade objects like street posts, trash, garbage cans and similar things.

the vast majority of ppl I know up here have switched from E7 to LR2 but we're just a bunch of crazy canadians

if i'm to take my photography seriously, i should just go for Lightroom, and don't even look at Elements?

It depends on how you work. Lightroom is really good at importing/managing your photo collection, and doing basic photo adjustments. Global adjustments such as contrast, saturation, etc. as well as things like cropping and rotating. For these global adjustments, no other software allows you to work as fast.

What Photoshop (Elements or Full) gives you is power. You can't do pixel level editing in Lightroom. There are no layers.

I think a good way to work is to have both. Most of your tweaking will be done in Lightroom, because the user interface is tailored to make the import->adjust->export workflow super fast. However, for shots where you either need more control, want to do pixel level editing, or want to be a bit more creative with your final composition, you would export to Photoshop.

Given that both have a free 30 day trial, I would just download them and play around, to decide what works best for you.

Last edited by MichaelM on Mon Feb 08, 2010 2:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

Popo. Lightroom functions as a database program with the functionality of camera raw. Unlike Elements it's not designed to be a one-stop solution so while I would love for it to have layers, I think the omission is quite deliberate.

So far, the majority of this topic is editing capabilities of lightroom. You have to look at everything....it has the editing, the cataloging, it keeps the original file so you can always undo anything, you can apply the same fixes to multiple photos using sync or paintbrush or copy/paste. It has the Print and Web modules. The key-wording is great because once you get 5000+ images, its so easy to find stuff. The grid looks professional and the id plate allows you to use it to show clients post-shoot. I could go on with more stuff, but just doing a little research can show guide you in making your choice. The workflow of lightroom is smooth because everything is all in one location, in one program.

+1 to MichaelM and grahamnp

I must say that I have never used Elements. I use Lr about 98% of the time too for photography, unless I'm doing some extreme touch-up, which is very seldom. In those few situations, I just use PS CS4. So I can't say not to get Elements. I don't know anything about it to be honest. But I use Lr for everything. Ps is a power-house editor, while Lr is a mix of Ps and Bridge.

grahamnp, that was my basic understanding of Lightroom but the comments made by Citruspers and Wolfsong made me re-evaluate it.

I originally wanted the organisation side which made me look at LR in the first place. I didn't like the raw converter though, but have since found one of my assumptions was incorrect: that it would only really be useful for raw. It does seem to do a lot to jpegs also. I'm still playing with it, but I don't like its speed so far.

Practically I have been looking at PS CS4 (or more likely CS5 by the time I want to pay for it) as an upgrade, since I've refined my storage method the LR database is not longer a significant benefit in itself, especially integrating my legacy collection will be hell. As much as I like Elements, it is what it is. A cheap cut down version of the full thing. I think I've explored its potential adequately now and think I could be doing more given the ability to do so.